


Seeking Elysium

by rainproof



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 06:29:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainproof/pseuds/rainproof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bianca di Angelo has a conversation with her father - set between Last Olympian and The Lost Hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeking Elysium

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the first five books!
> 
> I like the Hunters of Artemis, and I liked Bianca a lot - I like the way she struggles to balance her own needs with Nico's, after having spent decades and decades putting up with her kid brother. I was really sad that Rick seems to have written her out of the Heroes of Olympus books entirely.
> 
> After reading Son of Neptune I _get_ why Bianca di Angelo's fate needed to play out that way in order for Hazel's story to unfold, but I would have loved to see the why and when of it!! this is me, tying off that loose end.

“Father,” Bianca di Angelo knelt before the throne of black ice and bone, her pale shift spread out beneath her in a pool of ghostly white. One word was all that came to her lips in greeting... “hello” seemed far too casual when addressing the Lord of the Underworld, and in a cold, empty realm like this there was neither day nor night to reference in greeting. “Thank you for seeing me.”

Hades was nearly ten feet tall, garbed all in grays and blacks. The hues of his clothing shivered in slow motion, transforming into faces, bodies, and writhing, grasping hands. Sitting on his deep, towering throne with his chin braced against the knuckles of his fist he looked almost bored by her presence. “Bianca. I do not often grant audiences with the dead.”

“I’m grateful for your attention.” Bianca sat back on her heels and gazed up at her father; he towered over her, radiating poise and cold, calculated indifference. In life, his towering height might have made her feel small or unimportant.... but in death, those things mattered very little. His form was as irrelevant as her own, the size and shape of it merely reference points for those who must be able to comprehend some fraction of him; that form was a shell that conveyed nothing of who he was. 

She felt the same way about her own ‘body’. Her spiritual essence invariably coalesced into a shape resembling the figure she’d occupied in life, but it meant nothing. Even the things about her body that she once appreciated - the similarity between her eyes and Nico’s, the way her smile echoed that of her mother - now felt irrelevant.

Bianca remained seated on the cold stone floor, smoothed her shift and stated her request simply. “I wish to be born again.”

To her surprise, Hades merely nodded, as if he’d expected the request. “You are not the first of my children to ask this of me. It is a simple matter to return your soul to the realms of the living; it is a privilege reserved for those who died honorably in the service of the Gods. You have done this. It is also irreversible - are you certain this is what you desire?”

Bianca paused, collecting her thoughts. She had only suspected at her heritage in life - her brother Nico’s demigod powers far eclipsed her own, and even knowing the identity of her godly parent was not enough to make the Underworld feel right. Upon her death she had sunk into the underworld and learned of her parentage; more importantly, however, she had learned of the privileges associated with it. Hades was cold and distant, hardly a fatherly figure... but he offered to find her a permanent duty in his realm. It was the chance to stay herself even in death, to serve her father in some useful capacity while waiting for the (hopefully far, far away) day that Nico would appear and join her in the realm of the dead.

She refused the gesture, and had watched the lines in Hades’ face grow hard and unsatisfied. He was her father, yes, but this place could never be her home. It was painful staying here after living as Hunter. When she served Artemis the world had been vast and visceral and brightly moonlit - nothing like the cold, empty caverns of the Underworld. She missed it.

“If I am reborn three times and die honorable deaths, I can reach Elysium,” Bianca said, carefully. In truth, Elysium was not her greatest concern... but it was the one she would share with Hades. “This is what I desire. If...” she licked her lips. “If I am reborn, will I still be _me_? Be a demigod? Is my relationship with you and Nico a purely genetic thing, or does parenthood and _family_ connect us on a higher level? There’s so much I don’t understand,” she trailed off, hoping against hope that her father would see fit to answer even a few of her questions.

Hades tipped his head, his expression cold, with only a hit of annoyance in the lines around his eyes. This was as good a mood as she’d ever seen him in. Was he pleased that she was leaving? Or was she just asking the right questions?

“What makes you you, Bianca? Is it the godly powers you received from me? The beauty of your mother? Or is it the choices you made in life, the decisions that the fates weighed upon your death?”

Bianca bit her lip as he went on.

“I can make no promises about life. Life is beyond me. I will never be reborn into a body that walks in sunlight and breathes the air above.” Hades’ expression darkened moodily. “I do not attach souls to bodies, assign people their fates, or even determine the hour of their end. _That_ is not my role, and these are not questions I can answer.”

The girl closed her eyes for a long moment. “Then tell me this, if you can. If I return, if I die three times and find my way to Elysium... and then if someday Nico manages to do the same, if we both spend eternity in that place, will he know me?”

“If, if, if,” her father mused. “Why ask? If you have reborn and have no recollection or memory of him, will it even matter?”

She thought about her little brother, about his dark hair and goofy smiles and the way he always managed to shoot chocolate milk out of his nose at the most inopportune times. His stubborn refusal to quit even when he knew he was bound to lose, his compulsive collection of mythomagic cards, his sulky pre-teen pouts. She thought of the night he’d been born and she’d closed his tiny baby hand in her own as her mother said his name for the first time; she thought of the expression he’d worn when he learned of her death, when she’d hovered over Percy’s shoulder, invisible and watching his world fall apart. "It matters."

Then she opened her eyes, realization crashing over her. “If Elysium is paradise, then the answer is yes.”

Her father did not exactly nod - in fact, he didn’t respond in any perceptible way - but Bianca knew instinctively that she was right. She felt the ghost (ha!) of a smile trace across her mouth, and she bowed her head again.

“I am a god of grudges and death, but I ...” his mouth twisted, as though this was hard for him to grind out, “I will not begrudge one of my children this choice. Still, I will ask one more time. Is this what you wish? Do not make this choice for someone else.”

Bianca’s heart sank. The way Hades said that, his eyes narrowed with suspicion and his long index finger tapping a slow cadence against the arm of his throne... he knew. He understood her motivations. He recognized that as much as she wanted to seize a second opportunity at life for herself - as much as she wanted a chance to move and experience and taste and smell and _live_ \- it was her brother’s determination to give her that which necessitated removing herself from the Underworld entirely.

“I want this,” she said, firmly, “but its also the best choice for Nico. You told me once that I would have been a better instrument than my brother, but I don’t think that’s true. Nico is a strong demigod and a good person - he just needs an opportunity to grow into his powers.”

Hades neither confirmed or denied her claim, but he did shift on his throne. One of the faces across his breast howled in silent agony as the cloth pulled. “He has changed much over the past few years.”

“I know,” Bianca said, wistfully. “The last time he visited, he was taller than me.” How long ago had that been? Weeks, or months? Time moved strangely here - meaningless and sluggish. She shook her head; time was irrelevant, except that it moved for Nico and never for her. “You also told me that our flaws - the flaws of your children - were grudges and obsession. The obsessions of ...” she didn’t want to say the name out loud, “...some of your children... have nearly torn the world apart.”

“You are speaking of Adolf,” Hades said, simply, and she winced at the name. Her father seemed amused by her trepidation, and the tempo of his tapping finger sped up. “Bianca, you aren’t wrong. Your brother values you above all things, even years after your death, and his obsession with finding away to return you to life is a constant annoyance. Though I have tried to prevent him from seeing you here in the hopes of cooling that rage, he works ceaselessly against me.”

Bianca’s face hardened. “If I stay here, Nico will do something stupid to try and bring me back to life. Stupid, and needless. This is how it needs to be.”

“He will not understand your choice,” Hades warned, softly.

“No, he won’t. But that doesn’t mean the choice shouldn’t be made,” Bianca agreed.

Hades sighed and hefted himself up, his long bony fingers leaving the black ice-marble of his throne. As he stepped towards her, he shrank to the size of a normal man - and she took that as an invitation to stand and face him. At mortal size she saw more of herself in his features - and more of Nico. Finding the traces of her brother’s face in his features was strangely comforting.

They stood for a moment, just like that, before Hades reached up and pressed two fingers to her forehead. “As you wish, daughter.”

Bianca closed her eyes. 

“I free you from the bonds of this afterlife. May your soul find a vessel as strong and determined as the one it leaves behind.”

Bianca felt a tingling sensation spreading through her limbs as her body began to shine with a shivery silver light. Someday, Nico might understand. Someday, they might even meet again - in new lives, with new names and new shapes; and if not in life, there was always paradise. 

That day would be sweet.

Bianca di Angelo met her father’s eyes one last time - so very like Nico’s - and the world around her evaporated.


End file.
